What is it about cricket that makes you want to read about it? Not just the scores and the highlights, but the poetry of the cover drive and the whirr of the seam.

Cricket has attracted the best of writing from P G Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle, Douglas Adams, JM Barrie who often wove the game into their stories, to Neville Cardus, Ramachandra Guha, Gideon Haigh who absorbed gripping social histories from one afternoon’s play.

Ayaz Memon talks to cricket super-fan Shashi Tharoor and former cricket correspondent turned author Rahul Bhattacharya about outstanding writers on cricket and why, even in today’s era of highlight reels, good cricket writing is unbeatable.